Spain’s euthanasia laws have been labelled ‘morally depraved’ after a 25-year-old woman was killed following injuries caused by a failed suicide attempt.
Noelia Castillo, who was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and borderline personality disorder at 13, was given the lethal drugs at Sant Camil hospital on 26 March. She was a victim of a gang-rape in 2022, and shortly after became wheelchair-bound with chronic pain due to a failed suicide attempt.
Deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide in Spain have increased by almost 50 per cent since they were legalised in 2022. Activists are now calling for the eligibility criteria to be widened to include people struggling with mental ill health.
Her father tried to block her euthanasia in an 18-month-long legal battle, arguing that she lacked capacity due to her ill mental health, and pointing to “the obligation of the state to protect the lives of people, especially the most vulnerable, as is the case with a young person with mental health problems”.
But Spain’s Supreme Court upheld her ‘right to die’, and the European Court of Human Rights also rejected the father’s request for intervention.